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Ella's Big Chance by Shirley Hughes

Children's book of the week

Age 4-8 Hughes's latest picture book is a retelling of Cinderella, set in the 1930s. The ball scenes are inspired by the musicals of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and the costumes, Hughes's own fabulous inventions, are indebted to the couturiers of the 1920s - a postscript acknowledges Doucet, Poiret and Patou. The "Prince" is a duke of an apparently Mediterranean principality and his palace is a villa on the Côte d'Azur. Ella is a dressmaker in her father's shop, making beautiful, to-die-for frocks and coats for an elegant clientele from silks and wools and satins. The pictures are glamorous, romantic and atmospheric; drawn with a breezily relaxed line, they are expressive of character and scrupulous about details of place and time. But the twists in the story are among the reasons why this book is so satisfying. Ella's stepsisters are not ugly, except on the inside. They are models, rake-thin